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A better foundation..

A built a mockup of a site.

The middle content section needs to be fixed width at a certain point because the layout will get screwed up.

How can I accomplish that with the below architecture/css? The right column has consistently plagued my boss and I, it would slip under the center content and look ugly, I just passed it off as being a mockup--a demo.. well the "demo" has grown and matured and is constantly viewed and built upon.. how can we not allow the right column to go "UNDERNEATH" the center content if the resolution gets smaller?

/* All the content boxes belong to the content class. */
.content {
position:relative; /* Position is declared "relative" to gain control of stacking order (z-index). */
width:auto;
min-width: 220px;
margin:0px 220px 20px 210px;
background-color:white;
padding:10px;
z-index:3; /* This allows the content to overlap the right menu in narrow windows in good browsers. */
}

#navAlpha {
position:absolute;
width:190px;
top:120px;
left:15px;

padding:1px;
z-index:2;

/* Here is the ugly brilliant hack that protects IE5/Win from its own stupidity.
Thanks to Tantek Celik for the hack and to Eric Costello for publicizing it.
IE5/Win incorrectly parses the "\"}"" value, prematurely closing the style
declaration. The incorrect IE5/Win value is above, while the correct value is
below. See http://glish.com/css/hacks.asp for details. */
voice-family: "\"}\"";
voice-family:inherit;
width:190px;
}
/* I've heard this called the "be nice to Opera 5" rule. Basically, it feeds correct
length values to user agents that exhibit the parsing error exploited above yet get
the CSS box model right and understand the CSS2 parent-child selector. ALWAYS include
a "be nice to Opera 5" rule every time you use the Tantek Celik hack (above). */
body>#navAlpha {width:190px;}

Add a wrapper div around the entire content in the body. Set an appropriate min-width for wrapper such that it doesn't break when the viewport is reduced. (I've just measured it at 983 px, but there is also something that causes a permanent horizontal scrollbar in IE7)
Add a conditional statement after the last css file in the head, to set the min-width for early versions of IE.

easy way to achieve min width with no hack is to have a div width:300px; height:0px put this within the div in question and when it reaches the edge of the stop div it will go no further.. there you have min width, the same applies for min height